What’s the goal of education? Of training? It’s transformation. The traditional approach is to give a lot of information and hope they apply it. Sometimes a more avant-garde approach is that part of passing the course is implementing the information. But what we’re really looking for is transformation … which is rarely achieved through a curriculum-driven process.
Although it’s much easier to deliver this way, a curriculum-driven process may or may not be focused on what God is doing in your life at the present moment. But what if, by the time we finish an education process, we can say, “Here’s what the people are ready to do. And here’s how they’ve demonstrated that they’ve done it.” That’s competency-based education, and it focuses on the experiences people need in order to grow. Those experiences are what lead to real transformation.